Lost My Faith
by Ammar K
Summary: The five times Arthur was there for Cobb, and the one time he wasn't.


**Lost My Faith**

Summary: The five times Arthur was there for Cobb, and the one time he wasn't.

* * *

><p>Cobb is sitting there on the edge when he arrives, legs dangling out into empty space, leaning out into the wind, as if he can taste it, as if he's feeling it tickle the scraggly beard he's just begun to grow.<p>

"You know," Arthur says aloud, "When you sent me that text message, I didn't think I was going to find you _here_."

Cobb's acknowledgement of his presence is in degrees; in subtle shifts, in the way he turns just-so-slightly inwards towards the sunlit attic or the way he tilts his head questioningly. They never begin a conversation: it's always _in media res;_ never a beginning or ending so much as a crossroads, a point of continuation.

_Good_, Arthur thinks, he hates goodbyes and endings and departures, and introductions and hellos and beginnings aren't much better.

"I wanted to get the feel of it," Cobb replies, at last.

"Of what?"

"Breathing," Cobb says. "I wanted to remember what it felt like to breathe." With enough space between him and the ground, Arthur thinks, for a broken leg or two. In dreamspace, it's enough for a kick, the sudden jolt sending them snapping up into reality. Not here, though. This isn't a dream.

For him, the breaking point has always been clear and clean and sharp: like breaking glass. Like, for instance, the shattered fragile-blue of Cobb's eyes. (Mal's eyes on the other hand aren't like Cobb's; they're the sort of translucent you can fall into and drown and there's nothing peaceful about drowning or asphyxiation.)

"Lots of air out there," he notes, as off-handedly as he can.

"Yeah," Cobb says, absently.

He doesn't really do long awkward silences either, Arthur thinks. At least not with Cobb. Never with Cobb. Until now. "Any reason for this?" he asks. "You didn't pull me out of a lunch date just to stand here and talk about why you're sitting on the sill of your attic window?"

Now Cobb does turn back to look at him, and he's slightly abashed. "You were out with someone? I had no idea…"

He's lying, of course, but Arthur doesn't admit it. What's worse: making up a date or admitting you pretty much don't have anything resembling a healthy social life? "Pretty _and_ she likes her men systematic and organised," he says, "So this had better be worth it. What is it?"

Twitch of Cobb's mouth—he hasn't realised how long it's been since he's seen Cobb smile until he takes those minutes to register the gesture as one. "What, people go for anal-retentiveness these days?"

"Either that, or my eyes," Arthur retorts.

"The eyes," Cobb says, only he isn't making another joke about them. The humour bleeds out from his voice like the receding tide. "They aren't right," he says, tiredly. "That's what she says."

"She _who_?" Arthur demands. "Mal?" He knows he's right when he watches the way Cobb's posture tightens; the way he always draws back into some private and secretive part of himself where Mal is concerned.

Finally—"Yeah."

"You should take her to—"

"I'm handling it," Cobb says, a warning edge to his voice. "_We're_ handling it." Funny how a single word closed off so much, Arthur thinks.

"Okay, okay," he says. "Really though, if it's all peachy, then what are you doing here? What am I doing here?"

"I wish I knew," Cobb murmurs. "Arthur. D'you—d'you ever wonder if we're all projections? Just projections?"

Arthur tracks the way his eyes dart to the space outside the window; has the strangest of feelings that it _isn't_ about whether they're all projections, just some of them, that it's about the night when everything changed, when Cobb came back tired and said they wouldn't be working on their latest project and put things off for a month, when Mal started to fall silent everytime he entered a room.

He says, lightly, "Never was one for those philosophy classes in college. Took one of those and only passed because I took lots of notes."

Cobb raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah." Arthur shifts on his feet. "Look, Cobb, you didn't drop me a text so I could come down here and we could talk about my college days. What is it?"

Cobb says, very softly, "I wondered if she was right." He looks Arthur, right in the eyes, for an uncomfortably long period of time, before he continues. "She keeps saying it's in the eyes, but you're _you_. I _know_ that. And this…" Arthur's breath stops for the shortest of moments as Cobb produces a small, battered top from his pocket and tosses it with a backward flick of his wrist, starting it spinning on the wooden floodboards. Arthur carefully steps away; he knows what that is. Except that it's _Mal's_ totem, not Cobb's.

"What happened to your totem?" he asks.

"Gone," Cobb says. His eyes aren't watching the movement of the spinning top; he's still watching Arthur, still with that expression that Arthur isn't sure what to make of.

The top wobbles, its path decaying, and finally it tips over with the slightest of sounds.

"This _is_ real," Cobb breathes. He's never seemed so distant in his life, even though all Arthur needs to do is to take a step forward and to lay a hand on his friend's shoulder. He finds that he's done just that; Cobb starts at the contact but then allows it.

"Of course it's real," Arthur says, firmly. "I'm real. _And_ you owe me dinner at Killarney's for fixing that mess with your washing machine, which I am going to collect today by hook or by crook." He glances at the window. "Should close that, while we're at it. Storm's coming, from the looks of it. They were saying to expect showers with thunder on the radio earlier."

"Who goes out to eat on a dark and stormy night?" Cobb murmurs, but he allows Arthur to offer him a hand and to tug him from the open window.

"You are," Arthur retorts, "Under the pain of no one rescuing you the next time your washing machine acts up. See how you explain _that_ to Mal then."

A shadow passes across Cobb's face; too brief for Arthur to comment on it, but then his friend notices, and smiles, faintly. "Noted," he says, his voice dry. "I surrender, then." He bends down to pocket the top—Arthur hasn't yet asked why Mal doesn't use a totem any longer, why Cobb has claimed hers. Questions for another time, he tells himself, as he slides the window shut and fastens it.

"Good," Arthur replies. "Because I'd _really_ like a good steak tonight, and the ale there is to die for."

* * *

><p>"Why don't you start from the beginning," Arthur suggests, "And explain it to me all over again?" He resists the temptation to pinch the bridge of his nose—a particular tic he has when he's frustrated or just completely at a loss.<p>

This seems to happen a lot, when Cobb is involved.

Cobb says, "I want to marry her."

Something in Arthur's head whirls and goes still. He isn't sure what to _say_; congratulations, probably, but he can't seem to voice it, so instead, he manages to say, "I'm presuming you're talking about Mal, not her mother."

Cobb rolls his eyes. "Of _course_ I mean Mal, who else would I be talking about, Arthur?"

"I don't see the problem," is his reply, because he doesn't. It's true: they're so in love with each other that it's both painful and ridiculous to watch. They've passed the matching T-shirts and keychains stage, which is somewhat of a relief, but they do all sorts of little things for each other, and Arthur hardly misses the way Mal drops a kiss on Cobb's neck as she hands him a cup of coffee, or the way Cobb brushes her knuckles with his lips when she hands him the sugar, or the way they know each other's tastes without having to speak, or the way Cobb shows up to some of Mal's projects with a bag of flaky, fresh croissants and a thermos flask of hot chocolate.

He's known Cobb since they both interned under Miles, and he's known Mal since that exchange programme in Paris, and both of them are friends, which means Arthur should be happy for them. He examines his feelings in the few moments of silence that follow and concludes that he _is_ happy for them.

Cobb grips his cup of coffee, almost gestures with it, spilling coffee across the table. Arthur says, "I'll get that," and grabs a paper towel for the spill.

"Thanks—I don't know if she's ready, Arthur," Cobb says. "I don't know if _I'm_ ready, you know? But Miles was talking to me about it the other day, wondering if we were ready to take the next step, and…" he trails off.

Coffee soaks through the paper towel he's holding. "Alright," Arthur says, slowly, trying to untangle the messy weave of Cobb's thoughts. "So, you love her. But you're not sure you want to marry her. But her dad's been asking when you two are ready to marry. That it?"

Cobb squirmed in his seat. "I want it to be _perfect_," he mumbles. "I don't want us to do it because we have to or something."

"Tax benefits are quite something," Arthur points out.

Cobb pushes away the coffee mug and leans forward, propping up his forehead on his hands, fingers grabbing a handful of golden hair. He says, exasperated, "It's _not_ about the tax benefits."

"What _is_ it about?" Arthur prods. He's had enough of relationships for the time being—messy things that they are, and really, it says something about everyone else Cobb's probably talked the problem over with that he's finally come to talk to _Arthur_ about it.

"I just told you!" Cobb makes a vague gesture with a hand. "It's…I don't want marriage for any other reason than, than…"

"Than what?" Arthur wants to know.

Cobb takes a deep breath. "I want it to be _perfect_," he says, again. "Every moment of it. I want to plan it all; the perfect ring, the perfect honeymoon, the wedding itself…the perfect proposal…and I don't know if Mal will even say yes. You know how she is." Arthur is forced to agree. Mal is free-spirited; whether she feels they even need to get married is an entirely different issue altogether, and he doesn't think he knows what she might say about the matter.

"Certainty," Arthur says, dryly. "I don't think you can get that in a relationship, Cobb."

"I am going to throw my coffee at you," Cobb says, very deliberately. He looks at the mug, and is vaguely surprised to find he's already emptied it.

"Look," Arthur sighs, and he really does pinch the bridge of his nose, now. "You love her. She loves you. That's complicated enough. Why do you need to make it more complicated?"

"_You're _the one saying marriage is too complicated? You're the one who throws a fit if I don't register the compounds we use with IIPE!"

"I'm the one who's staying forever single," Arthur points out, "Because trying to get together with someone involves too much effort and is too bloody complicated. And we are not talking about me—we're talking about you and how much more complicated you're making things."

He really hasn't signed up to be giving his best friend relationship advice at a positively unholy hour in the morning, but Cobb fell asleep on his doorstep late last night, and Arthur's put him up on the couch and the coffee's at least made Arthur feel semi-human again. "Okay, look," he says, "I know people you can see about having rings made, if you've been having trouble finding what you're looking for in stores. But I really can't help if you're looking for proposal ideas, or to sort out your worries."

Cobb smiles, faintly. "Oh, I've been checking the Internet," he says.

"A miracle."

"I know," Cobb agrees, gravely. "First sign of the end of the world. Look. Arthur. You're her friend too—hell, you were her friend before I met her. Do you think you could…"

"Cobb," Arthur says, "As much as I like you, I am _not_ proposing to her on your behalf."

Cobb glares at him. "Asshole," he mutters. "I mean, could you talk to her for me? Feel her out? See how…" he wrung his hands. "I don't want to know," he murmurs, unhappily. "I mean, I _want_ to know her answer, but I just don't know how to have that conversation, if it makes any sense to you."

"Yeah, alright," Arthur says. "I can do that."

"Thanks," Cobb sighs and the tension bleeds out of him, in a rush. He releases his white-knuckled grip on Arthur's coffee mug, the one Cobb always gets everytime he comes over, and relaxes back into his chair. "You're good people, you know that?"

Arthur rolls his eyes and gets up to throw away the paper towel. "You're just saying that because you'd be _screwed_ right now without me," he murmurs.

"If she says yes," Cobb tells him, "I'm asking you to be my best man. No one else."

* * *

><p>Astana, Arthur thinks, is too <em>bloody<em> cold in December. The air seems to bite through the thick wool of his coat and his thick sweater beneath, and really, there should be a limit to the number of escapades that Cobb has dragged him into. His latest masterpiece involves hopping from bar to bar in Astana, where it's _absolutely freezing_ and Arthur is pretty sure it's going to end the same way the previous episodes did: with Arthur dragging Cobb out by the scruff of his neck and then reading him a lecture which won't really matter anyway.

He finds Cobb by the second bar, which only means he's getting better at this.

"…Hello," Cobb says, when Arthur locates a stool and sits down next to him. "I think I'm only seeing two of you, so I'm probably not drunk enough for this conversation."

"_What_ conversation?" Arthur says, and wonders if he needs a drink of his own. Even in the bar, the cold is still getting to him, and he tugs his knitted scarf tighter and thinks he'll be lucky not to lose fingers by the end of this trip.

Cobb stares moodily at the brimming tumbler of whisky that sits before him, on the dark wood of the counter. "The one about how my definition of 'lying low' could use some reworking."

"_That_ one," Arthur says, with feigned surprise. "So I guess we can all go home now, and I don't have to tell you that again?"

Cobb just glances dully at him, his pale blue eyes bloodshot. "…No."

"Suleimenov catches us here, and we're both screwed," Arthur remarks. "You know that, right?"

"…Yeah."

"Cobb," Arthur says, "You sure picked one _hell_ of a time for a heart-to-heart."

A brief smile flickers at the corner of Cobb's mouth, but he doesn't say much. Arthur revises his assessment of exactly how drunk Cobb is and pushes it a little higher. "I mean," he continues, "Look at us. We're freezing our balls off in Kazakhstan, so I guess we were long overdue for a personal crisis because anyone who willingly wants to stay somewhere and freeze their balls off probably fails their sanity check to begin with."

Cobb says, haltingly, "You hate the cold."

Arthur wishes it didn't sound so much like a question. "Of course I do," he says. "Anyone with half a brain does."

"You took the job, though," Cobb says, blinking owlishly.

Arthur exhales slowly. "Yes," he says. "Because I just go where the job takes me, and I was planning on getting the hell out of Astana the first chance I could." He rubbed gloved fingers still numb with the cold together, trying to eke out just a bit more warmth. His cheeks still felt frozen, but at least the bar was somewhat warmer than outside. Almost reason to stay awhile, he thought.

"Didn't have to," Cobb points out, after a few moments, his eyes guarded and hollow. "I know Rossi was interested in working with you." All those things, Arthur thinks, that he isn't going to say. Cobb wants him to go, of course, and he doesn't. He has these moments, dancing between selfishness and hints of concern, and sometimes, Arthur thinks he can almost see the person who he'd first known, not the stranger Cobb has become.

"Do you know where she is now? Ulaanbaatar. Right now, it's at least -13°F over there, and as far as I'm concerned, I don't even like working with her _that_ much."

"She speaks very highly of you."

Arthur snorts. "Your point, being?"

Cobb finally gulps down his whisky, but leaves the tumbler on the countertop and doesn't ask for another. "There are other places you can be. For Christ's sake, Arthur, it's almost Christmas, and you're spending most of it hiding out in a broken-down apartment before catching a hurried flight to Istanbul, and then, I'm guessing, stateside."

"I _just_ finished a job with you," Arthur replies. "Where the hell else would I be? And you missed the two scheduled check-ins. Keep this up, and we're gonna miss our flight out, and _then_ we'll be in for it. I'm pretty sure that Kassem was all for leaving without you." And they should, really, Arthur knows. That's protocol for extraction jobs this side of the law; when something goes pear-shaped, or even when something goes _right_, it's still every man for himself and no one goes back to pick up an extractor who's fallen off the wagon at the expense of the team.

Cobb blinks, again, and says, "Oh."

"Yeah," Arthur says. "_Oh_."

Cobb rubs at his eyes with his hands, swaying a little on his stool. Arthur eyes him carefully, but Cobb has never been particularly inclined to manic levels of activity when drunk. "Jesus," he mutters aloud. "I've been really…out of things."

"You don't say."

"I…just…" Cobb's mouth works, but the words don't come out, until he finally dips his head, so Arthur doesn't catch more than a glimpse of pure, naked, vulnerability and says, quietly, "It's been a _year_, Arthur, and I still miss her so much. Does it ever end?"

Yes, Arthur wants to say, but he can't, not in the face of how shattered Cobb is, and he says, instead, gently, pressing his hand to Cobb's shoulder, acknowledging the pain, "Maybe. I think it gets better, though."

"When?" Cobb breathes, haunted.

This, Arthur reflects, is as honest a conversation as they've had in the past year. He can't remember when they've been this open for each other. "I don't know," he says. He doesn't know if it is a question _anyone_ can answer. "Look. Christmas is a time for family. Will—" he thinks of his brother, with a pang of longing, he's spoken of him briefly, and Cobb knows he exists but that's _all_ he knows, "He's got the rest of the family there, and he knows I can't make it because I'm working, but I don't usually miss it, anyway, and that's my choice." He stares at Cobb, wills the other man not to avoid his gaze. "I'm here because I choose to be, all right? Anyway, I figure you need someone to stop you from—" he almost says, from screwing things up, because he sees that figure again, in Cobb's dream, black dress fluttering, but he can't talk about it, not now, not here, not so close to Christmas. "I mean, Jesus," he says, picking up from where he left off. "Just _look_ at you. I leave you alone for two days and you're off drinking your way through all the bars in Astana."

Cobb's smile is fleeting, but real. "I…" he ventures. "Well, I guess," he says, instead, shying away from two words they've never used: 'sorry' and 'thanks'. To do so might be to upset the fragile equilibrium they've established: Cobb with the weight of a dreamed lifetime on his shoulders and Arthur who has to be responsible enough for the two of them.

"Shut up and let me take you home," Arthur retorts. He shouldn't do this—sharing a safehouse isn't always a bright idea, and separation after a job is safer, but from the look of things, Cobb doesn't need to be left alone, right now. He needs someone to keep some of his reckless impulses in check.

And it's almost Christmas. There's that, too.

"Why?"

Arthur counts out enough tenge to cover the tab, and slaps the notes on the counter, and says, just loud enough for Cobb to hear, "Merry Christmas, Cobb. We need to leave." And, because he can never really control his tongue, "Next time, pick somewhere warmer to do this. I hear Rio's nice at this time of the year."

* * *

><p>Cobb is nowhere near where he's supposed to be. Arthur skillfully weaves his way past the projections—they ignore him, suggesting that whatever went wrong, they haven't made contact with the mark. He gives silent thanks because at least they have <em>that<em> fact on their side, and calls Stoddart.

"Can't see him anywhere," their secondary extractor confirms, warily. "Think he got waylaid?"

"Don't think so," Arthur murmurs, and the bad feeling is now beginning to grow into concern. "Stay on target. I'll go and see if I can find him."

"Got it," Stoddart says, and hangs up with a terse farewell. Arthur _likes_ the man: Stoddart's a decent extractor—not as good as Cobb, but as reliable as they come, and as far's Arthur's concerned, reliable is a rare commodity these days.

He tries calling Cobb but gets put straight through to voicemail. Arthur swears. He doesn't like the look of this situation more and more, and across the street, he can see Stoddart getting into position, ready to slip into the mark's safehouse and crack that safe. Cobb's supposed to be a few streets back, talking to the mark, making sure the necessary secrets are in the safe, but as far as Arthur can tell from his vantage point, Cobb _isn't_ there and the mark—a small-time video game designer—is walking down the street with a cup of coffee in the stereotypical hoodie and jeans.

A second call goes unanswered and Arthur jams the phone back into the pocket of his jacket. Where the hell is Cobb and what's keeping him? This is a low-risk job: made complicated only by the fact that the designer's mind is a little more defensive than some others they've seen, and so Arthur's supposed to be distracting the projections but he can't do _that_ until Cobb is in place.

The sniper rifle rests in a case at his feet. "Hell," Arthur says aloud, and breathes out his frustration. That's fine. He'll just have to find Cobb and get everything back on track. That's what he does. That's his job. He just wishes that he could stop being the person holding everything together.

Entering a shared dream is never a precise business, but for some reason they can't really explain, depending on how big the layout is, people sharing a dream generally show up relatively close to one another's positions. Which means that Cobb has to be somewhere in the vicinity unless he's gone and screwed off for some reason.

Which…Arthur has to admit that Cobb has demonstrated worrying tendencies on that front, of late.

A last glance out the window of the three-storey apartment building shows him nothing useful; no glint of sunlight on gold that might be Cobb. Very well, then. He's just going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. He nudges the case aside with his shoe and heads out the door and down the stairs.

He canvasses the places where Cobb might be, curtly tells Stoddart to make do when Stoddart calls him, noting that Cobb hasn't shown and there are too many projections to consider cracking the safehouse at this point in time, and finally locates Cobb in one of the apartments along the street (he's burst into too many of them to tell and he's pretty sure he's starting to elicit some hostile attention from the mark's projections.)

A memory goes through his mind; Cobb, sitting on the sill of the attic window, back when Mal was still alive and they weren't aware of the poison she was carrying, except that Mal is kneeling beside Cobb here, and whispering to him.

"Just one leap," she whispers. "And we'll be together. But you couldn't take it, could you?"

Cobb takes Mal's hand, gently, and kisses it. "No," he breathes. "Why are you here, Mal?"

Arthur watches, transfixed, his heart in his mouth. He's caught glimpses of her in the past, but had checked it up to the amount of stress he's been under lately, but if Mal's here…that means that Cobb isn't keeping his subconscious tightly under wraps, because he's pretty sure that he has no reason to be projecting Mal. And neither Stoddart nor the mark have ever _met_ Mal.

"You know why I am here," the projection says, and she's _Mal_, right down to the rich contralto of her voice and the warmth of her smile and the shattered light in her fragile blue eyes. Mal, preserved in rich, painstaking detail, the way only Cobb would have dreamed of her, hair unbound and falling free, and he realises that this is Mal as _Cobb_ sees her, and his heart aches the way it hasn't since the night he learned over a phone call that Mal was dead. "You know what you need to do."

Cobb has eyes for no one but her, and Arthur finds all his plans, the sharp rebuke he was about to deliver tumbling from his mind, voicelessly. This is it, then; it's getting worse and worse for Cobb, and he doesn't know what to do.

There's a job.

There is a gun in her hand; perhaps Cobb's, a Beretta so probably Cobb's, Arthur corrects himself, and she's pressing it gently into Cobb's unresisting hand. "Both of us," she tells him. "We can be together again, and see our children. You're waiting for a train, Dom. Do you understand?"

"Mal," Cobb whispers, hoarsely, and his hand rises and—

"Cobb," Arthur manages, and licks his lips, and tries again. "Cobb!"

They turn, both of them; a sharp look of guilt on Cobb's face, Mal's eyes guilelessly empty. He's racked the slide of his Glock and has put a bullet right through her and then a second, before he can even process having done so. The gunshots, like thunder, burning through the smoke in his brain with the taste of cordite. "Fuck, Cobb," he breathes. "What _have_ you done?"

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" Cobb spits out. The Beretta is still in his hand and at least he's not pointing it at either of them. Mal has collapsed, two holes burned through her head. She'd bleed more, Arthur thinks clinically, but Cobb's the dreamer and Cobb's never been one for realism in the direction of violence and gore.

"I could ask the same of you," he replies, hotly. "Cobb. She's dead. You know that." Painfully, he repeats, "This is real. You're not following her down."

"You don't understand," Cobb retorts.

"So explain it to me!"

He knows, the moment that shuttered expression appears on Cobb's face; the moment his mouth draws tight. "Now's not the time to talk about it," Cobb says, dismissively.

"Good," Arthur shoots back, "Because we're on a _job_, Cobb, and we're honestly fucked if you're going to keep bringing her in or if you keep going off on us."

Cobb's eyes are hard. "It won't happen again," he says, standing up. He checks the safety and tucks the Beretta into his waistband.

"It'd better not," Arthur says, moving into position beside him before he keeps away his Glock. "Stoddart's called me thrice already and he's not happy about this."

"Deal with it," Cobb orders, tersely. "I'll talk to the mark." They leave the room, side by side, but Arthur has the strangest of feelings that a door has just slid shut behind them, and there's no going back. He doesn't look at the body of Cobb's projection, lying on the ground, in the room behind them. But he knows that Cobb looks back, even for a moment.

So, he thinks, this is how it's going to be.

* * *

><p>"So," Cobb says, as Arthur pokes irritably at his salad.<p>

Arthur says nothing. This isn't the first time he's thinking it: that Cobb's on a destructive spiral, and that if he doesn't get out, they'll both go down together and that will be that. His job, he's accepted long ago, is to keep things from falling apart and to let Cobb focus on keeping himself from falling apart, but the more the years wear on, the more and more he's had to do, and he can't keep from thinking that he's just a drowning man trying to stay afloat.

When do you give up on your best friend? If there's anything, Arthur believes in reliability and loyalty. You don't bail on friends. You just don't. Sometimes, you need to be the one who hauls them out when they get in over their heads, or who grounds them when they try to do really stupid things like showing up for classes in nothing but their boxers. He just doesn't know when they've graduated from silly stunts with boxers to promising dangerous men impossible things. Or to the ghost of his best friend's dead wife showing up repeatedly on all their jobs, and with an inexplicable desire to consistently injure Arthur and cause him pain.

Or if leaving was ever a choice.

He's so painfully tempted to get out right now and to go home. He's long due stateside, and he'd _told_ Cobb the Cobol job was a bad idea—Cobol Engineering doesn't have a good reputation, but Cobb had overruled him on it.

Finally, he says, when he can trust himself to keep his voice even, "I know how much you want to go home—"

"No," Cobb retorts, his voice sharp. "You don't, Arthur. You really _don't_."

"—But this can't be done," he finishes, and stabs at his salad because he can't give voice to all the fear and frustration warring within him. "Look. We don't have to take his job. I've got contacts—I'll ask my network to keep their ears to the ground, and we'll figure out something, within the year. Two, at most."

"It can," Cobb says, confidently. "You just have to go deep enough."

"You don't know that."

"I've done it before," Cobb counters.

The lettuce is shreds, Arthur thinks, dryly. He should really stop, but he can't make himself do so. "When?" Because that's the question—people've asked for inception before, and it's the holy grail of the circles they now move in. It can't be done, everyone says, and decent teams have failed miserably trying. The subject just tends to reject the implanted idea, or worse, the team just gets torn apart by projections trying. And he's pretty sure that he _would_ have heard of it by now if someone's team had managed something like inception.

Cobb glances at him, lips pressed together. Finally, he says, "Before."

"Did it work?"

Very quietly, Cobb says, "Yes. Yes, it did." He stares at Arthur, daring him to ask more questions.

"Who did you do it to?" Arthur asks, quietly, a niggling suspicion growing in the corner of his mind, one for which he doesn't have words.

Cobb looks out the plane window. He doesn't meet Arthur's eyes. Finally, he says, "Does it matter?"

"Good luck," Arthur says, by way of an answer. He realises he's angry, and that he means it, and that he's tired and he doesn't see why he's always the one who has to hold things together because Cobb won't. He wants so badly to take Cobb by the shoulders and shake him; he wants so badly to walk out, or to realise that the damage of the years is just some elaborate joke, or to wake up and to realise it's all just a dream.

The difference between them: he knows better.

Cobb's breath hisses out between his teeth in a rush. "Where're you going?"

Arthur shrugs. "I'll catch a flight back," he says. "Stateside. Just like I was planning before Saito intercepted us."

"I need you," Cobb blurts out, probably before he can think the better of it. "Look. Arthur. I need your help on this one. It's big, and you know it. I need to form the best team I can, which means I can't do it alone." He gazes right at Arthur, pleading. "You're the best point man. I wouldn't work with anyone else for something like this."

"Tell me the truth," Arthur says, abandoning his battered salad as a lost cause. "You _have _done this before. You're not just saying it to get me on board."

"I swear," Cobb says, very carefully, "That I am not making this up. Inception is possible and I have done this."

But he doesn't meet Arthur's eyes, and he fidgets—a tiny gesture, but Arthur sees it anyway, fingers moving to rub where his wedding ring used to sit. Not anymore, Arthur knows, Cobb's taken it off a long time ago, but it still follows him into dreams. It's a nervous gesture, he recalls. Cobb worries at the ring when thinking—or when he's not quite being honest. He's seen that gesture in dreams, before, when Cobb's speaking to a mark.

He hates it that he notices; that Cobb's making that gesture and speaking to him carefully, as though he thinks Arthur is going to bolt if he isn't handled correctly.

But he notices other things: the set of Cobb's shoulders, the deepening eyebags, the shadows in his eyes, and how pale and haggard he's become. With Arthur, Cobb might still drag both of them down into his destructive spiral. Without Arthur, Cobb _will_ destroy himself, and no one will be there to stop him or to drag him out, kicking and screaming. He knows this with certainty.

"Fine," he bites out, making his decision, even though it doesn't sit well with him; the relief in Cobb's eyes, the slump of his shoulders tells him that there's something not quite right. "I'm in, then." He almost rubs at his eyes, but stills the weary gesture before he makes it. Every principle in the business of quasi-legal extraction tells him to cut his losses and to get away, and even now, Arthur thinks to himself that Cobb sometimes makes it awfully hard to choose to keep being his friend.

"So," he says, to break the uncomfortable, edged silence that has set in between them, "Why are we headed to Paris?"

Cobb's lips twitch in an expression that, three years ago, Arthur might have called a smile. "We're going to need a new architect."

* * *

><p>Arthur remembers, of course, the day Mal dies.<p>

Mal's gone to see three different psychiatrists, and as far as they're all concerned, she's taken a turn for the better. The eyes, Cobb says, a long time ago, and for Mal, they're still dangerously empty and fragile but Arthur thinks that things might finally be improving. They can stop walking on eggshells, now.

Cobb laughs, tells him he's celebrating his anniversary at a hotel with Mal, she's made the arrangements, and Marie will be looking after the kids. "I've been looking forward to this," he admits, and Arthur knows what he means. He's used to reading between the lines, where Cobb's concerned. Cobb wants nothing more than to bury the scars and to move on, and he's more lively and grounded than Arthur's seen him in months.

He's got his own plans; he flies off in the late morning to meet Will in Chicago. There's a family barbecue in the evening, and as far as Arthur's concerned, things couldn't be better. His older brother picks him up at the airport, clasps his shoulders briefly and says, "It's been a long time."

"I know," Arthur says, smiling. Being in Chicago's a switch. It feels as though he's finally able to get out from the shadow of the previous months; from watching Cobb struggle under the weight of a secret he can't quite talk about and trying to adjust to a friend who's put on seventy years, over the weekend. "How's the family?"

Will's eyes light up when he talks about his wife and his kids; he has two of them, Arthur remembers, mostly from emails— Sorcha and Fianna, both girls. He's been too out of touch, he realises, when they stare shyly at their Uncle Arthur as though he's a stranger, but pounce on their father enthusiastically. Fianna is the bolder of the two: she tries talking to him, asking him about what he does. "I organise systems," Arthur tells them, because that's simplest and because the other explanations are far too complicated.

Finally, Will laughs as he disentangles himself from his daughters, saying, "Your pa wants to talk to your Uncle Arthur for a bit."

Emily's in the kitchen, preparing the evening's barbecue, and she smiles when she sees him. "It's been too long, Arthur," she informs him. "Just where have you been?"

Arthur smiles and nods, because it has, although he can't really in good conscience tell them exactly why. It's better this way, he thinks, even though a pang goes through him at the sight of Will's family and how much he's missed. "Well," he hedges, "I've been travelling. Work, and all that. I've finally found some time off, though. So I thought I'd come down to see you, and Will invited me for dinner."

"Yes, of course," Emily says. "And Lisa and Harry are both coming, so you really should be prepared to do some decent grovelling." She smirks at his startled expression. "We _did_ say it was a _family_ barbecue, Arthur," and then chases him out of the kitchen.

Will watches him, bemused, from the backyard. Arthur makes his way across the living room and out through the door to join him. "Didn't know you'd asked Pa and Ma down as well," he remarks, quietly.

Will says, matter-of-factly, "What _did_ you expect? You've been missing for a long time, you know. They all miss you."

"I know," Arthur says. It is one of the most painful and thankless things about UC work, he thinks. Meeting your family is always dangerous; friends and colleagues can always blow your cover, especially when you're pursuing more dangerous fishes in that dark sea that is the world of extraction. But at the same time, it's incredibly thrilling and wearying at the same time, this blend of dreams and undercover work. He can't explain all of these again; Will _knows_, even if he doesn't know the details, but even so… He sighs, and says, "I'm here now, though. I've missed so much."

Will nods; to either, perhaps, or to both statements. "Do you ever want out?" he asks, finally.

Arthur raises an eyebrow, waits. Will glances over at him. "I mean, do you ever think about starting a family? Or if you're doing what you want to do?"

"Sometimes," Arthur admits. "Not really." He listens to the squeals of laughter as Will's children play; remember the casual way Emily hugs Will and pulls him in close for a kiss, the way they fit _together_ and he does wonder. He's wondered for a while, but in the end, they're still family, and he has nieces he can spoil and teach judo to and—he thinks of Cobb. The company of friends is a kind of family, he's come to realise, and he's never quite felt left out, even with the Cobbs. "I'm good," he says.

Will nods, just once, and smiles. "Good," he repeats. "That's what I wanted to know."

They set up the grill as the late afternoon turns to early evening and the sky grows dim; Arthur gets the coal and handles the fire and almost burns himself by accident as another car pulls up in the driveway and Lisa and Harry Killen join them in the backyard.

He exchanges a nod with his father, and allows his mother to pull him into a tight hug. He counts more grey in her auburn hair than the last time. "I haven't heard from you in a long while," his mother murmurs. "How _are_ you doing?"

"Fine," Arthur replies, disentangling himself. "I'm busy, but happy."

Lisa nods, firmly. "That's good," she says. "And that's the most important thing of all. I take it there's no grandchildren, I need to hear about?"

Arthur rolls his eyes. "Believe me," he says, "If you've any more, you'll be the first to know, I promise." He promises to visit, to keep in touch better, and tells her that the question of grandchildren is _definitely_ off-limits for the evening. He plays little sleight-of-hand tricks to amuse his nieces, tells them strongly-edited stories of his work, and finally, long after the food and the laughter and the warmth of family, finds himself sitting across his father in the darkened backyard, an opened bottle of beer in their hands.

Will glances at them and excuses himself, returning to the house with his daughters in tow. He'll help Will clean up in a bit, Arthur thinks. It's a clear night, with barely a hint of cloud, and he can count the stars that have emerged.

"You taught us to look at the stars, when we were younger," Arthur says, quietly. "I always remembered." He thinks of nights full of wonder as a boy, looking at the stars through a telescope, his father guiding both him and Will, naming the stars, telling them they were thousands of lightyears away, marvelling at the fact that starlight seemed to be as ancient as time itself. These days, he occasionally made time for stargazing on weekends, but the light pollution from the city often made that difficult.

"I did," his father says. "But I taught you many other things as well, I'm sure."

Arthur nods, and then realises it may be too dark for his father to see. Instead, he says, "Yes." Things like playing a game of chess; like the importance of strategy and organisation and good planning. Things like loyalty and determination and reliability.

Things, he realises, with a strange sense of surprise, like standing by your family and friends.

"Well, then," Harry Killen says, and Arthur finds himself studying the expression on his father's face. His father has always been a difficult man to read—their mother is more expressive, and Will takes after her. Will is open in his gestures, and always smiling—recently, Arthur thinks, he's found little to smile about, himself. But tonight; tonight is a time for him to set down his burdens, even for a short while.

Strangely enough, that says all that needs to be said.

"To family," Arthur murmurs, and raises his bottle. They clink the cool glass bottles together, and drink.

Somewhere in his pocket, Arthur's cell phone vibrates—he's set it to silent, and if he'd taken a look, he'd have seen that the caller was Cobb. Still, he doesn't. Instead, Arthur reaches into his pocket and switches off the phone. Tonight is for family, he's long decided. He'll deal with everything else tomorrow.


End file.
